Sex tourism is a natural phenomenon. If striving for sexual satisfaction is the primary motivator in people’s lives, then men go where they have the best success.

If the chances are slim in Europe or the US, or if success requires great effort, men move to more favorable grounds.

North American and European men enter sexual relationships easily in South America, in many countries in Asia, and in Africa. While this is sex tourism, it is not necessarily prostitution tourism. It may even be marriage tourism.

This can be regulated, but not rooted out.

Sexual economics perfectly accounts for the fact that as long as in Third World countries, the sexual interests of North American and European men are a perfect match for the economic interests of local women, sex tourism will go on.

Sexual economics also predicts that people have opinions that are in accordance with their sexual interests. But interests are often hidden behind a moral facade.

It doesn’t matter that often, people are not even aware that they pursue certain agendas because they match their interests, and instead believe that they do it out of virtue. To behave in accordance to one’s sexual interests does not require awareness of one’s sexual interests.

If we look at sex tourism from the perspective of sexual economics, we will see that the ideological positions taken by each and every social group are in tune with their interests.

Western male sex tourists usually find nothing wrong with sex tourism, or at least they claim that what is wrong is none of their business. In Third World countries, they frequent cheap local prostitutes, marry attractive local women, and play around in other modes.

Young local women who derive material benefit from the sex tourists also find nothing wrong with it. They need the source of income for themselves, and for their families.

Now for those who oppose sex tourism, often claiming moral concerns.

The women in the countries from where male sex tourists hail are usually strongly against sex tourism. No wonder. Their sexual interest is that “their” men stay at home and compete for the females of their own societies, and do not go abroad for easier, younger, and more attractive women. They have reason to be jealous. The women sought by male sex tourists in Third World countries are their immediate competitors.

They may love their men, and hate their female competitors, but this will not be the issue they publicly address. Publicly, they deplore the exploitive character of the relationships of Western sex tourists in Third World countries. When sex tourism issues are discussed anywhere in the world, it is easy to know ahead the opinions of representatives of Western womanhood. No sympathy with sex tourists!

And in order to provide substance to their cause, they will lobby Third World governments to implement laws pertaining to the sexual conduct of foreign men, or they will lobby their own government to outlaw, as far as possible, the sexual contact of their own country’s men with women in Third World countries.

The local men in Third World countries will be on the side of Western women. They are not happy with Western men who court successfully their girls and women. Western men are unwelcome competitors.

It is no surprise that young women in Third World countries dream of husbands from North America or Europe. They may even be able to migrate from the Third World to the Old World (Europe) or the New World (the Americas). A haven of social and financial security awaits them.

Local men in Third World countries can’t offer such prospects. Therefore, they oppose Western sex tourists and want girls who consort with them punished.

Older local women in Third World countries are also against Western men (at least those whose daughters aren’t about to marry Western men, thus providing an emigration route for the whole family). Older local women do not want younger local women have opportunities that were not available to them.

With predictable accuracy, all social strata propagate opinions that are in accordance with their sexual interests. People do not arrive at specific opinions out of moral considerations, or concerns of human rights.

The anti coalition, of course, is much stronger than the coalition of those who benefit from sex tourism. Therefore, conditions become worse for sex tourists anywhere in the world.

But enter war and destruction, terrorism and natural disasters, anything that erodes social order. Then there is a new playing ground for men from rich societies looking for sexual relationships in a newly or once again poor country.

Disclaimer: Statements on this page have not undergone the FDA approval process.

Privacy policy of Sumatra Pasak Bumi

For us at Sumatra Pasak Bumi, privacy in the age of the Internet is a major concern, and we greatly welcome the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

We have always been dedicated to privacy protection. The snooping and spooking of all and everybody is a pest. It’s not just the NSA and every large search engine and browser (we recommend Duckduckgo for searches and as browser), but even minor businesses that do their databases and customer profiling in hope of McDonald's style do-you-want-fries-with-that cross sales.

We don’t.

We respect the privacy of customers and people visiting our website. Our site is run from a secure socket layer. We do not use cookies. We do not maintain customer accounts for logging in later. Our website is simple html programming, and we don't even use WordPress templates or e-commerce plug-ins. We don't do a newsletter to which customers could subscribe, and we don't even include standard social media buttons that would link visitors of our site to certain Facebook or Twitter profiles.

We prefer communication by email using a gmail account because this is probably still the most private mode of communication (Hillary may disagree), and when we have information to disseminate to the public, we just publish it on our website. We do offer the option to communicate with us by chat apps if a site visitor so wishes, but prefer email.